St. Louis  A prominent Kansas proponent of intelligent design says scientists feel threatened by the theory and want to demonize school boards that have considered allowing it to be taught in their districts.

But at a weekend debate in St. Louis, a Cleveland professor said that if intelligent design were real science, those pushing it would be opening laboratories and performing experiments.

"They have no viable predications, no results, no science," said Lawrence M. Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University.

John H. Calvert, a retired attorney from Lake Quivira who helped found the Intelligent Design Network, said because intelligent design can't be discussed - and subsequently, because Darwin's theory of natural selection can't be criticized - in schools, students aren't getting enough information to decide for themselves.

"Can evolution ever be falsified if it can't be criticized?" Calvert asked. "Isn't the role of public education to inform?"

The debate Saturday drew about 400 people to Washington University's Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values.

Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause because they are well-ordered and complex. Its advocates attack evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes could have created the basic building blocks of life, that all life had a common ancestor and that man and apes shared a common ancestor.

But many scientists see intelligent design as another form of creationism, which the U.S. Supreme Court has banned from public schools.

Intelligent design has gained prominence recently as challenges to the theory of evolution mounted.

In Harrisburg, Pa., eight families are trying to remove intelligent design from the curriculum of the Dover Area School District, which requires students to be exposed to the concept.

And in Kansas, the State Board of Education has given preliminary approval to science standards that include language proposed by intelligent design advocates reflecting skepticism about the theory of evolution.

Krauss said Saturday he wasn't opposed to teachers discussing the idea of intelligent design, much as history teachers would tell students that some people believe the Holocaust never happened. But they should not be forced to do so, and students shouldn't have to learn those ideas and know them come test time.

"Teachers should be able to throw out the idea, but it should not be required to be part of the curriculum, and students should not be tested on something that's not science," he said.

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Comments

Like, I say we take all notion of god out of public life....
Thats what all hippies like me think, right?
Not realy!
I just want to keep in check the religous right who violate seperation of church and state.
I just want to see that students are taught science in the classrooms, not religion, unless its a private school.
In private schools, they can teach that some guy named BIF created the world in order to make cakes....or whatever.....
I know, some still feel threatened by folks who are more intelligent than themselves. Ohl well.
Get over it....
Have a hippydippy day!!!

There are plenty of Scientists who can attest to a supreme energy force, as they have done experiments, repeatable, by the scientific method on Mediums. Some of these Scientists have been Nobel Prize winners in Physics and Chemistry (Sir William Crookes and many others, see: www.cfpf.org.uk and www.victorzammit.com). These Scientists reports have had a hard time making it tot he mainstream. But I don't care what mainline relgion we are talking about. Whether in the Middle East or Europe or in American relgious zealots have kept these reports from the mainstream. If the people of the Earth really knew what science has found out about life after death, the purpose of life on Earth and its creation and evolution over time, the masses would soon realize that they don't need the religions. Reports from the other side, tell us of a creator of light energy, but these reports from the other side do say that this creator is nothing like the God of the worlds religions. Second God can't be tested. The origins of life can be, one scientific tissue slice or fossil at a time. Students learn the scientific method in public school, Hypothesis are tests for repeatable concrete validation. You can't test god in this way and call it a science class in a public classroom. Now you could include it in the Fine Arts arena, specifcally in the Philosophy curriculm.